thenearshore | [Closed] You can't raise hell with a saint

Following Suijin's Network Post, Schuldig contacts his favorite cloud of darkness from afar - just a bit of telepathy this time, not constant monitoring.

'Busy bee there, Mahakala. Having a bit of fun without me, I see.' He's not actually upset or bitter - he's just curious. His mental tone reflects that excitement. 'Any good tidbits you found out that Amaterasu's buddy didn't feel like sharing?'

Schuldig woke up that morning to find that his modest 2-room cavern behind the hidden alcove of Loki's Hollow had expanded somewhat to include 4 rooms - one being his bedroom, one seemingly the room for Kageri, another a common room that was where a person would enter from the alcove door, and a 3rd bedroom with the door closed.

Well, it was his temple after all, and one he guarded tightly from outside intrusion, so he wasn't about to let that door stay closed for long. Especially not when he got the feeling someone was on the other side. So he started focusing, enough to try and freeze that person in place before opening the door.

Her first clue should have been that she'd been sleeping rather peacefully. Good things didn't just happen to Jennifer, not without some kind of cosmic catch, you know? And when she awakens, she stretches out on the bed with a content sigh, but the feeling of peace is broken within moments when a feeling of dread drops into her stomach like a lead ball.

Something as wrong. A connection had been severed--this wasn't Judar's temple, this wasn't her bedroom. Her body tenses and she sits up, looking around in confusion. Although she couldn't say for certain why she thought it, she had the very real impression that Judar simply... wasn't, anymore. Like a candle snuffed out.

Which meant... what, for her? Had she failed that badly? Unease circles and constricts at her heart, leaving her unable to move for a moment.

Er, wait, no, she really couldn't move. What? She struggles a moment in confusion before she notices the door opening, and she watches it warily.

"Oh..." Recognition, if barely-- she knows him, a little. Judar had spoken with him, hadn't he? She blinks slowly, trying to figure out why he'd be here. Unless this was his place? So then... Why was she here?

Naturally it happens when Ukoku's working on something. There's a long pause before he actually answers, and his own mental tone doesn't quite manage to be perfectly neutral (he looked up reflexively and bumped his head on a shelf, and Loki should knock, or something).

'If math is fun for you, I have lots of it. She was very forthcoming, actually, by their standards, although I'm a little disappointed she didn't just publish everything.'

It hadn't even been 12 hours since his encounter with the Demon and Schuldig was starting to recover from the various encounters he had with all of those people. He hadn't gone that all-out in a long time. It was a little thrilling to be so worn out, if he was going to be honest with himself; it meant that next time he'd be in much better shape for going several hours at a time while trying to balance so many different tasks like that.

Reflecting on them, he remembered one in particular - his encounter with the kid named Goten, the one connected to Sousuke, or 'my bitch' as he'd called him. Schuldig hummed to himself briefly before deciding that yes, he did want to reveal that encounter to Sousuke before Goten had the chance to get to him. The sooner the better, even if he was worn out. He could at least start the conversation now... but to what end?

Schuldig tapped his chin for effect and walked around his bedroom of Loki's Hollow, mind wandering back to that first conversation with Sousuke. What could he possibly do with Sousuke's help... 'Hou~' He'd felt a small surge of energy when he'd gone and answered that one prayer with Nagi. It was too soon to ask him again and Kageri was a sword, not his preferred weapon. Maybe he could exert more control over a shinki that hadn't been a weapon in the past. And hey, if something happened to Sousuke, he wouldn't even bat an eyelash. Okay his god may ask about him. Best to find out who his God was before casually sweeping bodies under the rug. Alright, he'd find out in person when he could peruse the kid's mind.

Was he alone - that was the important question. Was he somewhere that an outburst of anger wouldn't alert someone? Yes? Perfect.

'Ring ring, bitch~'

Her recognition isn't his. However, the fact that he's right he had an intruder got him in a very unpleasant mood as he mentally grabs her roughly and seeks out whatever thread she's connecting in her mind. Okay, another God's shinki. Perfect. His unpleasant attitude becomes outright anger as he stalks over to her, hissing through his clenched teeth.

Schuldig grabs her by the shirt collar even while he has her movement restricted and leaves her mouth able to move. "What are you doing here?" He asks it so that she'll answer it in her own mind, but the confusion he gets in response... He scowls, even angrier. What the hell! "Your God - that Judar guy - you're sure he didn't send you here? He didn't just release you?"

He's about two seconds from just hauling her out of here with a teleport.

Jennifer yelps in shock and fear, wilting instantly (or as best she can with being unable to move), desperate to make herself seem smaller and weaker, prey cowering before a predator; like somehow she can make herself tiny and he'll lose interest.

"I-I don't--" She whimpers, his anger almost a physical force for her. What had she done wrong? Her mind races-- okay, so she'd shown up here completely unannounced, but it's hardly her fault. She doesn't dare voice that though, trembling in his grasp. "H-he's gone."

That she can say with some certainty; she's not sure how she knows, but it feels like a cord's been severed for sure. Judar isn't here anymore. "Please, I... I'm sorry." Jennifer isn't sure what she's apologizing for--everything, possibly, anything if it means he'll calm down some.

[Many hours after their Network conversation, Schuldig reflects on the information he'd gathered from the withholding of information on Suijin's post and his chat with Ukoku. After that, he decides to track down Jae-Ha in person and teleport nearby in the Far Shore. Funny thing is with the Green Dragon's leaping power, he knows that as soon as he picks a spot, Jae-Ha's going to keep moving, so he gets close and then...

Schuldig leaps as high as he can - far below Jae-Ha - and teleports himself the rest of the way up into the air, projecting where he thinks Jae-Ha will end up.]

Yo~

[Jae-Ha is too deep inside his head for this. Not many people can reach him, and the ones who can always have to make their way up slowly. He feels free soaring through the skies, until Schuldig appears out of nowhere like this. Walls go up immediately and his momentum is ruined by the way his body turns in surprise.

It's so easy to just twist in reflex, spinning to dig his foot straight into the side of this person's face.

It's only after the fact, when they're both (likely) falling to the ground that he registers the "yo," and recognizes the voice. The feeling that comes from that is no better. He's terribly on edge, and he might not land on his feet after a surprise mid-air kick.]

She believes he's gone, anyway. And Schuldig doesn't have a good enough sense of the guy's mind, having never met him, to really sweep the whole of the Far Shore looking for him. Sure, he could use her connection to build up a kind of mental profile, but for right now her being in his private living space is more important. He's just another person to get interested in hunting down on top of Jae-Ha's shinki friend. Where did these humans go, indeed... He's still convinced someone's plucking dead leaves from a tree.

He sets her back down on the bed and stands back, letting go of her upper body and just keeping her legs pinned so she can't leave. "So you're not here on his orders. Fine. Why are you here and how did you get in?"

Knocking's for people with manners and he of course has none. He's reclining in his bed, staring up at the rocky ceiling.

'Nah, math's not my specialty, but I know a guy.' Nagi, of course. 'You really used math to figure out a graffiti artist's intentions? What, was it hiding a demon-summoning circle inside of it?' Possibly being the reason that one Demon showed up in the first place? Stranger things had happened in Schuldig's life.

How many days had it been since he’d come to be Rin’s shinki? A little over a week. After their first day together as god and shinki, the following had been a blur sometimes. Relieving as it was. What all this “god” and “shinki” business really entailed had finally started to make some sense, what with their occasional training and practice. Sousuke was starting to get used to shifting in and out of his canine form when Rin needed him to be in it.

Though that didn’t excuse his god from answering that embarrassing prayer request in that was. No, Sousuke wasn’t irked at him for answering the prayer; he’d want someone to help him find his dog too if his pet had gotten loose and ran away. But honestly, did Rin think Sousuke’d be fine with literally sniffing out the wayward canine’s whereabouts because he was also a dog? Che, he’d been pissed at him for a while afterwards. (Even if he was more or less over it by the following morning.)

However, despite his comfort in spending time with his god, no amount of requirement was going to attached Sousuke to someone’s hip. He valued his own freedom, and that of his god’s. Staying cooped up in the castle for the first week had been fine; there was a lot to see in the castle and he got to learn his way around it, somewhat. Plus the occasional lessons which he’d rather not have other people see either of them making fools of themselves trying to figure things out.

It’d been an hour or so since he’d left Eros’ Castle behind. Getting out into the fresh air again was relaxing, gave him time to think and be on his own. As for getting back… well… Rin could find him via their connection and of course Sousuke’d find his way back when he wanted to (right). Hands in his pocket, normal clothes on his body, he headed towards the one main place he knew of in this world: the sakura grove that he’d first encountered here. Even if the trees had burnt down, the open area and the park around it were still a landmark he’d come to base his wanderings off of. It was relaxing…

Until that voice came into his head. Sousuke tensed up and his jaws locked. There was no way he could forget the person that voice belonged to. He wanted to be surprised, wanted to feel shock there was a voice in his head in the first place. But unfortunately, his loathing towards that person canceled out even his stun. Teal eyes narrowed and he purposefully ignored the words and kept right on walking. Filling his mind with useless things, like how many trees he could count right now in his vision.

She breathes a sigh of relief when he lets her go, grateful for the use of her upper body again even if she can't get her legs to move too. Absently she rubs at them, as if somehow that will help, but it's not like they've fallen asleep or gone numb. His doing, then, it must be.

"I don't know." Jennifer's voice is small, uncertain. "I was just sleeping, honest, and then... Then when I woke up..." She gestures about lamely, a silent 'I was here' finishing out the sentence. Her mind races for an explanation and she winces slightly.

"I... I've heard that sometimes shinki are transferred to other gods. Sometimes they show up in the other temples?" But she looks uneasy and not too pleased with the idea, despite her attempts to mask her expression. Partly because Schuldig doesn't seem like any better a match than Judar had been and partly because she's not exactly happy to be thrown about like cattle to the next person in line.

'Well, not exactly. He'd written all his plans in a code. He had a thing for math.' To put it mildly. 'There's a lot on his particular aesthetic vision, his method of corrupting ayakashi, and a theoretical plan for faking his death. Do you want to see anything?'

[He'd not made a promise per se to find Jae-ha next time instead of contacting him via telepathy, but there was a merit in just mixing things up for the hell of it. Schuldig could get behind the chaotic appeal of that.

So the fact that he'd done as he'd said he would only to get kicked in the face is not something he enjoys by a long shot and the sheer intensity of it sends him reeling. Any normal kick he could have righted himself mid-air and landed in a kneeling crouch. This isn't a normal kick. Subconsciously he knows that Jae-Ha's leg is the most dangerous part of him and yet--

There's a shout of pain and surprise as Schuldig falls and only quick thinking has him teleporting at the last second to the rooftop below, although he still falls in a heep with a bloody lip and nose. He's not sure it isn't broken and he's too stunned to figure it out just now.]

[Schuldig should be grateful that having Jae-Ha so shocked and already in mid-air meant his kick wasn't anywhere near his full power. A full powered kick from his leg would mean death, but he'd just been surprised. He really hated being chased, and that was what it felt like.

Now, though, his soaring is ruined, and he falls down towards the ground. He can't properly adjust his weight in mid air, so he falls onto the roof a little further than Schuldig had, and if the temple is exceptionally old, he probably crashes right through it. Ow.

He's fine down here, though, shifting to push himself up and stare up and around at where he had gone. He'd vanished in mid air, but he saw red down on the roof—]

Loki? [That's who it was, wasn't it?]

'Aww, no hello? How rude...' Schuldig teleported to behind one of the burned trees. 'Been too long, hasn't it? We've both had some time to get busy...'

He latched onto Sousuke's mind, noting he'd spent most of his time with his god - that Eros kid! Hah! What a laugh. Maybe next time he wanted to see the young man he'd use that connection instead of the kid. 'Maybe if you'd kept as close an eye on your new friends as on that little dog, little Goten wouldn't have gotten hurt.'

Schuldig stepped out from behind the tree then, and held tight to Sousuke's mind. This was far less about keeping Sousuke pinned to one spot this time -- Schuldig was counting on pure shock to do that this time -- and more about showing him a memory of what he'd done: how he'd hurt innocents, how he'd hurt the boy himself by making him fall, how he'd controlled Goten's body as he'd done to Sousuke, how he'd revealed that he would hurt Sousuke, and then how the light dimmed from Goten's eyes while Schuldig started to wreck the boy's mind from inside out, causing external bleeding. He cut it off there though.

'So here's my suggestion,' Schuldig began in Sousuke's mind with thinly veiled sadistic mirth. 'You help me out for maybe an hour or two, I don't go back and finish the job on the kid.'

'I could always peek in your dark little hidey hole mind for that, but sure, why not. I'm considering painting the town red as it were. It would be nice to see the real thing at least once in person. Although...' Now he's curious. 'On that note too, aren't ayakashi already corrupted? Their minds are kind of a raw emotional mess. Not much left to corrupt.'

He's starting to realize why Judar was having such a hard time with her. A meek woman like this who he knows blights her god often. She's not even trying to stand up to him, which he'd at least respect a little bit. She's still being honest. He doesn't want to believe her. He wants her to be some spy who got in in a way he hadn't thought of that he can just tamp down and his private sanctuary will be safe again.

"Transferred..." He wants to ask 'by whom' and 'who decides on this transfer' but he's gotten enough clues now. She doesn't actually know why she's here. She's just guessing, fishing for information to placate him. Like her, he's not convinced she'll be a better shinki for him than she would have been for Judar in the long run.

"I could still dismiss you right now without naming you. See how they like that." But then he gestures angrily to the doorway, gripping it tightly. "Except that you've already seen this place. And so has whoever dropped you off on my doorstep. I'd be a fool to get rid of you now, but I also think I'd be a fool to take you. Judar probably would have released you eventually too the way you were blighting him. How can I expect you won't do the same thing to me? Unless..."

He finally walks in and closes the door behind him. Which is much creepier than what he actually has in mind, but that won't stop him from using it to intimidate her. "Unless you're some real powerful shinki. What was your power and vessel form for him?" Schuldig's trying to bend over and stared at her angrily, but it might be a bit mitigated by the broken nose he's sporting and cut in his lip. He's had bandages on it and it's healing well - better than normal, for which he's grateful - but the injury still only happened about 36 hours ago.

Edited 2016-10-31 05:33 (UTC)

[His skull is ringing. It's been forever since he got hit like that. Consumed, nearly, in fire and fighting on mental battlefields sure, but not physically injured that badly. It takes several seconds for the pain in his nose to register.]

FUCK!

[Slowly, very slowly, he starts to get up since thank goodness it was only his nose and mouth getting-- was that grazed and it did that much damage? Maybe. He doesn't know anymore. The point is his legs hurt but they aren't broken. But that one scream hurt his jaw something fierce.]

'THAT IS WHY I USE THIS WAY, DAMN YOU.'

[The yell gets his attention, and for a moment he's worried that he hadn't held back his strength enough. Had he broken something? Seriously injured him? He pushes himself to his feet just in time for that mental yelling to cross through, and that's so completely distracting that he has to raise a hand to his head. He thinks Stop that! as an automatic response, but after a couple of seconds, he doesn't want to encourage it happening again with their distance.

Plus, he should check on what happened. He jumps, coming up right through the hole where he'd crashed and landing carefully along the edge. He wobbles, and he looks a little scuffed up and bruised, but otherwise he's a-okay, despite falling from the sky. Immediately, he turns to Schuldig.]

If you had contacted me mentally first, I would have kicked you intentionally. What are you doing, teleporting in front of me in mid-air?

Jennifer says nothing to any of that, a flash of anger heating her. If Judar hadn't frightened her all the time, if Judar had taken the time to try-- Her fingers curl tightly into her dress and she steels herself. Something about Schuldig is familiar, in a similar-but-different way Judar's treatment had been.

(If she had the memory, she could easily compare him to Diana, but the memory isn't there, so the association just meets a dead end)

Either way, she feels she's dealt with this sort of attitude her whole life and despite her fear she takes a deep breath and slowly uncurls her fingers to lay flat against her thighs. The bandages on his face certainly help, and she meets his gaze a little steadier. "It was a brooch, that's all." But of course, that's not all, and she worries her bottom lip between her teeth a moment. "But, I could... create these vine-whips, with thorns-- like the stems of a rose. I don't know the limit of how many, but he could manipulate them as he liked."

She doesn't know if that counts as being powerful or anything, but Judar had seemed to like them.

Her gaze slides to the door, uncertain. He wouldn't let her go, he'd implied, but he might not want her as a shinki either, so... What was she going to do? Be locked up here?

(Something about that, too, doesn't seem wholly unfamiliar, but her mind shies away from it when she tries to think on it, so she gives up.)

He calls up an indistinct blur of the memories he has of Sho's distorted ayakashi, without focusing on the words, as an experiment—it seems unlikely that Loki might be able to hold back from commenting, if he can pick up on it.

'I guess it's how you define it, yeah? Normal ayakashi aren't complicated. Adding any element to anything could be corruption, if that's how you want to think of it.'

[He groans and holds his mouth some more, finding blood there and so using his sleeve to dab at it a bit.]

'I seem to recall someone asking me NOT to contact him telepathically and so I replied I would TAP HIM ON THE SHOULDER.'

[Can you tell he's bitter? He's so bitter right now.]

'Your shoulder was up in the air, so I went up in the air, goddamn. And don't get pissy about me talking like this now - I can barely feel my mouth and nose.'

Edited 2016-11-01 03:03 (UTC)

The idea is that you shouldn't surprise people. I don't enjoy being pursued.

[He doesn't enjoy any of this. The mental prodding, the appearing out of nowhere, the constant messages... He's uncomfortable, and that's more than clear now that Schuldig isn't dealing with hiding his negative thoughts. He thinks he probably should jump away, flee, get away from this uncomfortable feeling... But he knows that wouldn't solve anything, and despite all of this he does feel bad for hurting him when he didn't intentionally mean to.

So instead, he moves closer and crouches, grabbing at his wrist to move it out of the way so he can see his dumb bloody face.]

Let me see.

[Closed] You can't raise hell with a saint

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